Conditioning or preparing the surface of the ground before landscaping is almost necessary. Often, particularly at new construction sites, the top layer of soil is mixed with undesirable materials such as rocks or large sticks. These undesirable materials must be removed to provide the typically desired, smoothly contoured surface before grass and other foliage is planted. Usually, this work is performed with hand labor and it can be a labor intensive process using rakes and shovels to separate and then pick up the undesirable material. The undesirable materials are often buried under one or more inches of loose top soil, resulting in the need for great effort to unearth these undesirable materials and to remove them. Indeed, a site often appears to be ready to be landscaped only to have a rain occur that reveals much such undesirable material that had been buried under the top layer of soil.
In part because the supply of available labor to perform these landscape preparation tasks fluctuates and is often in short supply and/or expensive, those businesses involved in landscaping have both a need and a desire to be able to perform such conditioning with mechanized equipment rather than hand labor.
None of the presently available mechanized tools quickly and easily removes debris from a site, however. Many of the tools, particularly those that are attached to power sources such as tractors, however, are not well suited to work in confined areas. One piece of equipment used on many landscaping sites is the skid-steer loader. These loaders are capable of being maneuvered in small areas and of moving heavy loads. Some attachments have been made for this type of equipment, but none are capable of raking a landscaping site while also being able to pick up and remove the undesired materials. Thus, separate attachments are required by those using such machines to perform various aspects of a landscape preparation job.
It would be desirable to have a tool or piece of equipment that was capable of raking or combing the upper soil layer to remove undesired materials such as rocks, sticks, construction debris such as, for example, boards, insulation, or siding, or other undesirable materials from the area to be landscaped and that was also capable of being used to remove the undesired materials from the site as well as to clean it.